Association for Behavior Analysis International

Incidental teaching is a behavior analytic technique that can be especially useful for teaching new behaviors. Incidental teaching calls for arranging the environment so that highly reinforcing materials or activities are available to the child. But the key to incidental teaching is that the child is obligated to interact with the teacher or other adults in the environment in order to gain access to the materials or some aspect of the activity. Typically arrays of incidental teaching opportunities are arranged. In this way, naturally reinforcing interaction with teachers is optimized, as are opportunities for reinforcement. Incidental teaching has a long history of use with children with autism and it continues to be an efficient and effective teaching technique. In this invited tutorial Dr McGee will feature a review of the literature on the use of incidental teaching and offer a series of recommendations for incorporating incidental teaching in any intervention program for children with autism.